Jimmy Carter, the longest living former president, whose term was marred by the Iran hostage crisis and rampant inflation but who went on to build a humanitarian legacy that was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize, died Sunday. He was 100.

No cause was announced. In February 2023 he entered hospice care.

The peanut farmer from Georgia was a virtual unknown when he launched his long-shot 1976 presidential bid that took him from “Jimmy Who?” to his inauguration as the nation’s 39th president.

The Democrat took office at a time when the country was still reeling from battles over civil rights, Vietnam, inflation and Watergate.

The defining moment of Carter’s presidency, though, is often thought to have occurred Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took more than 50 U.S. hostages who were held for 444 days. A rescue mission in April 1980 was a dismal embarrassment, as eight U.S. crewmen died and no hostages were released.

Carter left the White House in 1981 at age 56, trounced by Republican Ronald Reagan. A year later, he established the Carter Center in Atlanta with the stated mission of human rights, preventing and resolving conflicts, and improving freedom and democracy.

Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, cited “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

He continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. He and his wife, Rosalynn, traveled to Nashville in 2019 for their 36th project helping build homes with Habitat for Humanity. He and Rosalynn Carter, who died at age 96 on November 19, 2023, were married for 77 years.

Jimmy Carter lived in the house he built in 1961 in Plains, Georgia, about two-and-a-half hours south of Atlanta.

“Across life’s seasons, President Jimmy Carter, a man of great faith, has walked with God,” Sen. Raphael Warnock , D-Ga., wrote after news of Carter’s deteriorating condition earlier this year. “In this tender time of transitioning, God is surely walking with him.”

Life in Plains, Georgia

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, to Lillian and James Earl Carter Sr. The father is described by the Plains Historical Preservation Trust as “an insurance broker, farmer, fertilizer dealer, Baptist and Democrat.” They lived in Plains, a town of about 700 people nestled in an area of cotton and peanut fields.

Jimmy Carter had ambitions beyond Plains. Inspired by an uncle, he attended the Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. During a visit home, he asked Rosalynn Smith, whose family had known the Carters for years, on a date. Jimmy and Rosalynn, then a college student in Georgia, stayed in touch, and in July, a few weeks after he graduated from the Naval Academy, they were married.

It was Adm. Hyman Rickover who would be an influence on Carter’s naval and political career. Rickover ran the nation’s nascent nuclear submarine program, and during their job interview, asked Carter if he had done his best at Annapolis.

Carter, who said he graduated 59th in his class of 820, conceded, “I didn’t always do my best.”

“He looked around me for a long time,” Carter recalled as recounted by James Wooten in his book, “Dasher.” Then Rickover asked one final question, which Carter said, “I have never been able to forget — or to answer. He said, ‘Why not?’ I sat there for a while shaken, and then slowly left the room.”

Carter went on to work for Rickover, and “Why Not the Best?” became a Carter catchphrase, the title of his 1976 campaign autobiography. He would often cite Rickover as one of the greatest influences on his life.

Carter’s Navy career was short-lived. His father died in 1953, and his family needed him to run the business in Plains. Rosalynn protested, but the family headed back to Georgia.

Entering state politics

Carter won a state Senate seat in 1962, and in 1966 ran for governor. It was a long shot. The civil rights movement was redefining Southern politics.

The changes rocked Georgia, and Lester Maddox, who had gained fame when he pushed potential Black customers away from his Atlanta cafeteria with an ax handle, would beat Carter in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Carter returned to Plains, devastated and introspective.“ At a crossroads, he turned increasingly for solace to his faith,” wrote Peter Bourne in his biography of Carter. “There followed a series of events that would reshape both his relationship with his faith and the central guiding motivation in his life.”

With the help of his sister, Ruth, an evangelist, Carter “was recommitting himself to Christ, through deep ongoing study and meditation about Christ’s life.” Through this study, Bourne wrote, “he sought to gain the fullest possible understanding of what the Christian message meant in modern life.”

When he ran again for governor in 1970, Carter publicly softened his stance toward segregationists. He had kinder words for Maddox and defended all-white academies, where many whites fled as public schools became integrated.

Once elected, though, Carter made it clear he would be a scion of the new, inclusive South.

“No poor, rural, weak or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simply justice,” he said in his inaugural address — stunning words from a Georgia governor at the time. He hung a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. outside his office at the state Capitol.

By the early 1970s, national politics was in turmoil. Richard Nixon won 49 states in 1972, leaving Democratic nominee George McGovern and his party dazed with no clear path forward. McGovern was boosted by his anti-Vietnam War stance, but the war was winding down.

Unknown, but not for long

It was a time of enormous uncertainty. Runaway inflation, and later long lines for gasoline, rocked the economy. Nixon would be dogged by the Watergate scandal and resigned in August 1974. Trust in government was sinking.

Along came Jimmy Carter. He announced his campaign for the White House in December 1974 in Washington, and few paid attention.

But top aide Hamilton Jordan had a plan, and Carter presented himself as not only a fresh voice unencumbered by Washington tradition or scandal, but as a politician with a strong moral compass. He campaigned as a calm antidote to the turmoil of Washington.

“I will never lie to you,” Carter told voters.

It worked. He beat President Gerald Ford in a close election, and on Inauguration Day 1977 vowed to set a new course and new standard. He, Rosalynn and daughter Amy stepped out of their limousine during the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and walked. He later addressed the nation in 1977 wearing a sweater.

Carter’s initial priority would be energy efficiency to ease what he called “the moral equivalent of war” in a speech to the nation three months after he took office.

Carter won some important battles. He was able to open relations with mainland China, secure approval of a treaty to end U.S. control of the Panama Canal, and perhaps most significantly, broker a historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt after nearly two weeks of talks at Camp David.

Issues with the economy

But the nation’s turmoil persisted. The economy remained shaky, and by the end of his term inflation and interest rates were hitting double-digit levels. Gas lines reappeared in many places in 1979. Carter was able to secure an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, but Senate efforts to ratify it were thwarted by anger over the Soviet Union’s 1979 Afghanistan invasion.

Carter appeared more and more to be losing control. He and his top advisers retreated to Camp David in the summer of 1979 to reassess how to run the government, and when it ended Carter delivered what came to be called the “malaise speech.”

He told the nation, “We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

The speech only exacerbated his political problems. Though Congress was run by Democrats, leaders were cool to Carter, and by late 1979, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts announced he would challenge the president for the party’s nomination.

The Mariel Boatlift

Carter’s election-year problems faced another daunting challenge: the Mariel Boatlift. The administration had been seeking better ties with Cuban President Fidel Castro, and in April 1980 Castro said Cubans could leave.

But Castro opened his country’s mental health facilities and prisons, and they flocked to South Florida. The White House was uncertain how to deal with the situation.

On May 6, 1980, in an address to the nation, Carter declared a state of emergency in the areas of Florida most “severely affected” by the exodus, and an “open heart and open arms” policy to all refugees fleeing Cuba.

Miami was overwhelmed with the refugees. Many were criminals. The boatlift ended in October, but Carter suffered political damage.

Carter won his party’s nomination that summer, but only after a bitter battle with Kennedy. He ran against the upbeat, optimistic Reagan, losing 44 states as he became the first elected president to lose a reelection bid since Herbert Hoover in 1932.

The Iran hostages were released minutes after Reagan was sworn into office.

Carter went back to Plains. The Carter Center would become a popular site for international forums. It also took on a mission to spread Carter’s vision for fighting poverty and hunger. Global 2000 was a bid to boost food production in Africa.

Prolific author

Carter became a prolific author, writing about a variety of topics from memoirs to treatises on the Middle East to “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.”

Among his books: “The Craftsmanship of Jimmy Carter.”

“I like to see what I have done, what I have made,” Carter said. “The pleasure does not fade as the years go by; in fact, with age my diminished physical strength has eliminated some of the formerly competing hobbies and made woodworking even more precious to me.”

He and Rosalynn were very involved with Habitat for Humanity and worked on their 36th project in 2019. They first volunteered with the organization, which helps build homes in the U.S. and overseas, near their home in Georgia in March 1984.

On February 18, 2023, following a series of short hospital stays, the Carter Center released a statement that Carter “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

Carter is survived by children John William “Jack,” James Earl III “Chip,” Donnel “Jeff” Jeffrey and Amy Lynn, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchlldren. A grandson died in 2015.

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